Blue looked, mouth slightly ajar, at the assembly of motherly women, heavy with child, and muttered: "Drat. I guess this is my fetish now. d**n you, Adeaze, do you have any idea how much keeping such a family costs? I bet you do, you filthy moneybag."

Blue's head hurt; the neo-ethnic was painfully aware of the stress the discrepancy between desire and pragmatism caused. Blue wanted nothing more than to shoot Adeaze in the face (f!cking corp lamprey, take this, and that, you being two-faced means I have to shoot you in the face twice?) and to run off with a heap of drugs and women, laughing. A truckload of both. Pragmatism demanded to be more thoughtful about all of the above, lest Charlie-Foxtrot take over.

To catalyse the tension, Blue barked at LV "Wench, you were spoken to, by the distinguished gentleman that is Joao, so please be so kind and reply, yes?"

Recomposed, Blue added: "Jerome, you're all soldier-y and tactical. Do we just go for the shuttle and the goods inside, or do we get rid of Adeaze first? I could end her, but I guess Joao would not want to calculate the conversion rate between back rubs and murder, so... what next?"

“Not too close,” Obutsu warned. “Been here long enough that they could have proximity alarms set up. Want this to go quietly if possible, yeah? One clean shot, then leave a distress beacon for the meninas. I didn’t sign up for a bloodbath.”

Arjan drove the turbo tank towards the downed shuttle, approaching cautiously. As they closed on the craft there was sign of at least one obvious fight, maybe even two. The shuttle was mostly intact, but it had been peppered with small arms fire. Several hoverbikes were scattered around the shuttle, most of their riders were still there, also on the ground. Judging from the bloating and stench, they had been dead for a while, they must have shown up hellaciously early to be this decomposed. There were a number of 'bots too, but they were just as shot up. This looked like a last man standing that went sideways.

There was a second shuttle, a formerly sleek and sexy private owned job. Formerly because it was shattered into a stunning number of pieces.

There was a camp set up in the shadow side of the shuttle, made from tattered clothing and broken pieces of the ship. There were easily a dozen people under the makeshift awning. Women, most of them looked pregnant, and there were more children with them. Mx Adeaze stood out like a sore thumb, her skin a glossy dark brown, while the women around her were all blondes, redheads, and a few had muted pink or purple hair, they were all decided caucasian. The children were the same, pale complexion and light colored hair.